Inside Microsoft we have interesting discussions about our blogs. Today Michael Rys sent around his stats. 72.86% of his traffic (about 2500 visits today) came from search engines. 25.84% came from Web sites, including other blogs, .89% came from email. .41% came from news groups. Of the traffic that came from search engines, 94.56% came from Google. 2.49% came from Yahoo. 1.83% came from MSN Search. Does Google have a monopoly in search? I’ll let you answer that question, cause I’m not a lawyer.
Oh, and he also has a blog on http://blogs.msdn.com but that one gets far less of its traffic from search engines, which tells him that not all blog URLs are being rated the same.
Also, blog search engines like Technorati aren’t bringing him any noticeable traffic. That matches what I’m seeing in my referer logs too. I wonder if Google’s blog search is going to change that much. I doubt it. Time-based search isn’t as easy to use as link-based-relevancy-search like what Google’s main engine gives us.
. It’s all about who does the best job for people. I’ve been meeting with execs from all over the world (only a small percentage of them are from Google) all day long and I see total untapped opportunity. I mean, freaking, big, untapped opportunity. The kind where people who run major media companies walk up to you and say “can you help us?” Google and MSN and Yahoo all put together haven’t even tapped a small percentage of the potential opportunity. We’re all leaving money on the table.
